Lubsen and his team are responsible for some or all of the following: the creative direction of the outward-facing website, IN.gov; the single sign-on portal, Access Indiana; a mobile wallet procurement project; a portal for public records requests; a citizen engagement portal that sent 114 million emails and 6 million texts in 2023; streaming meetings for 100 internal agencies that conduct rulemaking; being IT’s legislative liaison; and managing the IT department’s literal space, from construction and renovations right down to who physically sits where.
In brief, Lubsen might be the busiest communications director in all of public-sector IT, at least in terms of what’s under his purview. Oh, and all of that comes in addition to standard communications duties, like writing press releases and responding to emails from reporters. Lubsen’s background, meanwhile, is actually in political communications, rather than tech, which shapes how he does the work.
“I can tinker with technology, but I’m not a technologist,” Lubsen said. “I describe my role as I need to be able to describe the technology to people who are not technology people. If I was a technologist, doing that might be harder.”
This perspective has helped Lubsen with one of his chief accomplishments: Access Indiana. Creating a single sign-on portal for citizens is inherently a difficult lift, especially in a state with many internal agencies. But Access Indiana is an unequivocal success, with the portal now reaching 2.3 million users. It speaks directly to what Lubsen sees as the core of his job — making it as easy as possible for people to interact with their government.
All of this has made Lubsen stand out as an invaluable member of the team in Indiana, as well as one of the most accomplished comms directors in public-sector technology.
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of Government Technology magazine. Click here to view the full digital edition online.